run the capitalist algorithms on the words “how is it still a question that capitalism is bad?” and see what happens. short lived? long winded? data collection? V’Ger?

is it similar to “this sentence is false”? so many lessons to be learned from such a small enterprise, it’s a wonder people still confuse blind greed with ideas, let alone use a categorical failsafe word, “capitalism”. or was there no fail, so, BDSM? qop!

it’s feudal, B.

kowalityjesus

The contradictions feed upon each other, where the same institutions that generate loans to develop housing, then allocate those loans to unqualified parties to purchase that housing, and blow each other up.

Where did the housing crisis in 2008 come from? You can look at the use value/exchange value. You can look at the way in which the monetary system invented new forms of fictitious capital to manage supply and demand and realization/production. It also calls into question the idea of private property and the state, in which the state became the vehicle for promotion of private property for very specific reasons. From the 1930s onwards there was a huge state push to promote home ownership, not housing as a commons but housing as a private property element. The state was unquestionably implicated deeply in the crash of 2008.
Private appropriation of social power has been significant and its going on right now, the big guns are moving into certain places and their just buying up foreclosed houses like crazy, warehousing them and waiting for the revival of the market and then they will make a killing. This is what they had done with assets in SE Asia in 1998-99. This is a practical tactic.

We’ve got to think about a system which maximises the use values to population in need. To hell with exchange value. Meaningless work has become so common; pathologies are emerging all over the place.

Rhoid Rager

Money in its current form prevents that from happening, because it accrues value (creating its own energy) over time–violating the essence of all reality that we know. Money, through usury, is socially engineered to reproduce itself to the limits of human endurance and ecosystem stability. It is a conceptual perpetual-motion machine applied to the real world of tangible items and limits. But, it is used as a symbol of objective trust between all humans who seek to participate in the growing formal economy. In truth, through the systematic deskilling and concentration of humans into urban centers devoid of areas to produce their own basic energy source (food), money has captured people’s trust to labour for the engineers of money–the money lenders. The Marxists, like Harvey, though brilliant in their critique of the social ills and dynamics of capitalism at times, do not focus on enough of the role of money. Money is the clearly the primary leverage point for the species, and the social ills that Marxists attribute to capitalism are more properly sourced in the overarching logic of debt-based, exponentially-increasing usurious money.

The ontology of Marxism is skewed towards one sector of society (the labourers) and this warps their whole research agenda and conclusions about our current social system. Anarchists operate on an ontological basis that is more accurate to reality in my opinion, but can be too passionate to take a systems theory approach to assessing where we’ve all gone wrong. The so-called anarchist academics obsess over the historical minutiae of activist movements and personalities. It can be quite overwhelming to behold the spectacle of their writings about obscure historical figures and movements. I often think how much intellectual energy is squandered on simply research to write books and papers only a scant few are willing to read. Maybe I’m wrong, however, and it all does serve a purpose to sustain the more esoteric corners of human knowledge.

Sorry to be a broken-record with this. I need to write this stuff down in a LibreOffice Writer doc rather than on Disqus all the damned time.

kowalityjesus

Yes this is too high a concentration of energy and intellectual skill/experience to be tossing into the wind of disqus. I don’t really have anything intelligent to say, I was just copying down some of what Harvey was saying towards to end of his lecture. Anarchist academics are an interesting tangent to this area of thought. Shouldn’t society be paying us for pondering some of the finer spores of socio-economic thought?

I hate to despoil the ontological fun, but if a few coy intellectuals are the only ones espousing a progressive agenda, how can it ever possibly be implemented? lol

Rhoid Rager

Payment for pondering? I’d settle for beer and weed as payment for philosophizing. I’ve only ever had one taker for that offer, but I think he enjoyed my jokes more than my philosophy.

How to implement a progressive agenda? Not with/through/by/for/under academics (maybe on top of though). As far as I know, agendas are realized through patience and tempered ambition. I tend to lack both of those, though.

kowalityjesus

It is amazing what a man needs to endure in order that his life is not a wisp of smoke. God is with us, my friend, rest assured.

Rhoid Rager

i should also add that i’ve never looked at my comments on Disinfo as a waste. if anything they’ve helped me hone my arguments and my writing ability. i’ve enjoyed my brief time here immensely and get along with most here like a house on fire. The disinfo community is the best online community i’ve found so far, and it’s a shame we can’t all meet up for a beer or a toke every week.